Mikhail Lesin, Putin's press minister from 1999 to 2004, was found dead in his hotel room in Washington, DC in 2015[1]:
> The US government ruled Mikhail Lesin’s death an accident, but multiple intelligence and law enforcement officials suspect it was a Russian hit.
> Vladimir Putin’s former media czar was murdered in Washington, DC, on the eve of a planned meeting with the US Justice Department, according to two FBI agents whose assertions cast new doubts on the US government’s official explanation of his death.
> Mikhail Lesin’s battered body was discovered in his Dupont Circle hotel room on the morning of Nov. 5, 2015, with blunt-force injuries to the head, neck, and torso. After an almost yearlong "comprehensive investigation," a federal prosecutor announced last October that Lesin died alone in his room due to a series of drunken falls “after days of excessive consumption of alcohol.” His death was ruled an "accident," and prosecutors closed the case.
> “Lesin was beaten to death,” one of the FBI agents said. “I would implore you to say as much. There seems to be an effort here to cover up that fact for reasons I can't get into.”
> He continued: “What I can tell you is that there isn’t a single person inside the bureau who believes this guy got drunk, fell down, and died. Everyone thinks he was whacked and that Putin or the Kremlin were behind it.”
It's quite suspicious given Putin's tendency to murder/assassinate people with poisons and 11th floor jumps, especially given the recent failure in the space program. I'm not sure why we're not supposed to be suspicious of any high profile person dying in Russia given Putin's penchant to have people killed or imprisoned when they embarrass him. No idea how Navalny isn't dead yet unless Putin just wants to break him in Russian prison.
Its funny to me that with the current state of Russia this guy could have died with absolutely zero interference from the state and the rest of the world will assume he was killed no matter what comes out of Russian media, purely due to their track record with this sort of thing.
Its funny to me that with the current state of Russia this guy could have died with absolutely zero interference from the state and the rest of the world will assume he was killed no matter what comes out of Russian media, purely due to their track record with this sort of thing.
A historian and renowned Russia expert in my country (Estonia) commented that this was probably bad timing for Putin. Now, as a martyr, Navalnyi is much more of a disturbance to Putin's regimen than he would have been as an isolated opposition leader serving a 19-year prison sentence, which rendered him not a direct threat to Putin. Like the expert put it: as a political prisoner, Navalnyi was already simply forgotten by many. [1]
Somehow this got me flipping through a book by Anna Politkovskaya, Russian journalist extraordinaire who covered the Second Chechen War and was shot dead in Moscow in 2006, on the birthday of Putin. [2]
I want to think that the age of massive online information does make at least a slight difference as to how much of the reasons behind events like these see the light of day eventually. Rest in peace, Alexei Navalnyi.
1: https://news.err.ee/1609255851/historian-navalny-s-death-wil... (Interestingly, the paragraph on Navalnyi being more of a disturbance now, after being declared dead, was not included in the English version of this news story. This is quite surprising, since ERR is actually a very well balanced source of news. All in all, that story includes interesting takes on Navalny as a politician, too, by another highly respeced Russia expert from Estonia.)
Opposition leader Boris Nemtsov is killed. What better way for Putin to distract attention from the murder than to disappear himself, leading to rumors of Putin's death?
Russian warlord Prigozhin who challenged Putin 2 month ago is dead (together with 9 others) after his plane was shut down in Russia by a rocket (most likely an execution ordered by Putin).
Do you think his location is some great mystery? The actual reason he is not dead is because there is no political will to conduct an operation on Russia soil to murder him.
Navalny was far from a saint, but his death is still a Kremlin job by any measure, and I suspect will only accelerate Putin's decline, as the state of Russian affairs continues to degrade.
Yes but but I guess he is worth more to his family alive than dead. That likelihood is pretty high, either in a Russian jail or poisoned again with a nerve agent. I don't think he'll be lucky to survive another attempt like that. He is really courageous but am still not convinced his decision to return was a sound one. Putin ordered the killing of many opponents and the Russian people as a whole don't show any sign that they care.
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